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Section C
Recording One
Hi, everybody. On Tuesday, America went to the polls. And the message you sent was clear: you voted for action, not politics as usual.
You elected us to focus on your jobs, not ours. That's why I've invited leaders of both parties to the White House next week, so we can start to build consensus around challenges we can only solve together.
I also intend to bring in business, labor and civic leaders from around the country from outside Washington to get their ideas and input as well.
At a time when our economy is still recovering from the Great Recession, our top priority has to be jobs and growth. That's the focus of the plan I talked about throughout the campaign.
It's a plan to reward businesses that create jobs here in America, and give people access to the education and training that those businesses are looking for.
It's a plan to rebuild our infrastructure and keep us on the cutting edge of innovation and clean energy.
And it's a plan to reduce our deficit in a balanced and responsible way.
This is even more important because at the end of this year, we face a series of deadlines that require us to make major decisions about how to pay down our deficit —decisions that will have a huge impact on the economy and the middle class, not only now but in the future.
Last year, I worked with Democrats and Republicans to cut a trillion dollars, worth of spending, and I intend to work with both parties to do more.
But as I said over and over again on the campaign trail, we can't just cut our way to prosperity.
If we're serious about reducing the deficit，we have to combine spending cuts with revenue—and that means asking the wealthiest Americans to pay a little more in taxes.
That's how we did it when Bill Clinton was President.
And that's the only way we can afford to invest in education and job training and manufacturing—all the ingredients of a strong middle class and a strong economy.
Already, I've put forward a detailed plan that allows us to make these investments while reducing our deficit by $4 trillion over the next decade.
16 Why are leaders of both parties invited to the White House next week?
17 What is the focus of the mentioned plan?
18 What are the major decisions about?
19 What does combining spending cuts with revenue mean?
Recording Two
Most people agree that eating healthy food is important. But sometimes making good food choices can be tough. Now, there are apps that can help people learn about the food they eat to improve their diets and their dining out experience.
OpenTable
OpenTable helps people choose restaurants when they want to go out to eat. OpenTable is a free service that shows users restaurant availability based on where and when they want to dine. OpenTable users can also make restaurant reservations directly through the app or website. OpenTable gives users points when they make reservations. The points can add up to discounts on restaurant visits.
When users make reservations through OpenTable they get an email confirmation. They can also add the reservation directly to their electronic calendar.
Max McCalman's Cheese and Wine
But which wines go best with which cheeses? Max McCalman's Cheese and Wine App can help. It provides information about hundreds of different cheeses and suggests wines to pair with each. More than 3,000 possible combinations can be found based on 600 different cheeses. The app includes a "Cheese 101" section that teaches the basics about choosing a cheese. Max McCalman's Cheese & Wine Pairing App is free for iPhone and iPad.
Epicurious
Epicurious is a free app and website to help users find recipes and become better cooks. The app has more than 30, 000 recipes and can create a shopping list based on the ingredients in a recipe. Users can search by ingredients or buy vegetables that are in season where they live. The app also rates recipes for popularity and other qualities. Users also provide advice about making the recipes. Each recipe has a list of ingredients, preparation time, instructions as well as a photo of the finished meal. Calorific
What does 200 calories look like? It can be hard to picture. For example, 200 calories of broccoli and 200 calories of cake look very different! The app Calorific shows just that. Calorific provides images of 200 calories worth of food. The pictures can help people on diets and those who just want to eat healthier. The app also provides the weights of each food pictured. The app is free for iPad and iPhone. There is also a version that provides more information for a price.
Harvest
An app called Harvest informs users about seasonal fruits and vegetables in different areas. This can be helpful in planning meals. Harvest also tells about pesticide use and organic food. Users can learn the best ways to safely store food and keep it fresh longer.
20 What are the points OpenTable offers users for?
21 What do we learn about Epicurious?
22 How does Calorific help people get healthier?
Recording Three
We've had fifty years of progress since that landmark Surgeon General's report back in 1964. Over these years incredible things have taken place. Our society has changed—changed in terms of tobacco use, in terms of its acceptance of smoking in public establishments, in restaurants, in bars. So things have really changed for the better. In addition, smoking rates have come down in the United States.
We went from 43 percent of adult smokers in the United States to 18 percent currently. So that's really made incredible headway, yet I have to emphasize the battle isn't over, the war isn't over.
Eighteen percent of American adults who are still smoking, basically 40 million people in our population. That being said we have to realize also that of that whole group, we're going to have roughly a half million people every year dying from smoking related diseases.
So although we've made progress in a half century the reality is we still have a lot of work to do. So, you know, we increasingly see tough advertisements on the air against smoking.
These ads are working. In particular, the CDC—the Center for Disease Control and Prevention came up with a series of advertisements from former smokers called TIPS.
And that really was quite effective in terms of reducing the number of smokers. In addition, there's various policies that need to be implemented and further implemented in order to make us a tobacco-free society.
So we really have to work at the idea of using media, using those advertisements. We have to look at really concentrating on the youth of America to make it more difficult to actually get cigarettes. And in addition we have to look at the idea of pricing cigarettes appropriately so that ultimately it becomes a hardship to use those products.
So, let's talk a little bit about packaging those products. Other countries have much more graphic detail of the potential dangers of smoking.
We're currently working closely; the office of the Surgeon General is working closely with the Food and Drug Administration, specifically the Center for Tobacco Products and are reanalyzing the whole row of the idea of the warning labels and the idea of how graphic they should be, and so there will probably be more information coming out on this in the near future.
23 What is the number of smokers in America?
24 What measures can be taken to make it harder to get cigarettes?
25 What institution does the speaker most likely come from?
